Science! In Action...

   This past week our department participated in Science in Action and Spring Break Escape, two outreach activities that work with kids in our state to learn more about science. The former is part of our museum's Newman-Whittman ExplorOlogy Program, the latter is by our Education Department.  
       Laura and Tamaki, our dynamic department duo, helped do the Spring Break Escape portion because I was in the field with the Science in Action team. They brought out specimen drawers from our collection to talk about our insects and other recent invertebrates, which as you know we have a lot of! It went really well, despite some events with the building that were unpredicted. Having them do the programing along with our two exhibits on spiders and insects is a great pairing.
      Science Escape is a program that takes elementary to middle-school age kids into Sutton Wilderness to learn about the scientific method and fieldwork. We [Jes and Kristi from the ExplorOlogy program, Jessa and I as science experts] first go to the schools and teach them about the scientific method. Then, once they learn the basics of it (observations; ask questions; develop hypothesis; test hypothesis; draw conclusions), we take them out into the field to make observations of the world around them at Sutton. There are 5 environments at Sutton that we take them to: woods, a pond (VERY dried out pond), lake, wetlands, then grasslands. While in the environments we have them look for the things that interest them or give them questions that they'd like to learn more about later. Once we wrap up our observations of the different environments at Sutton, we take them back to the museum to write down their observations in the field journals we give each kid for them to keep. This is followed by lunch, and then formulating questions in groups that they can develop a hypothesis and a experiment to test it with. Then we go back into the field and actually attempt to test the hypotheses, and then wrap up with program with drawing conclusions and answering any other questions about science or the scientific method.

Overview of Sutton Wilderness Park from the BioBlitz website

     We had four days of this program, with ages of the kids ranging from 3rd graders to 8th graders. Some of the more interesting questions we had included: what lives in holes; which habitat has the most frogs; and are there more insects in trees or grass. The kids had a great time looking for animals, and a lot of them really enjoyed just getting in the mud of the lake and pond and getting completely covered in dirt. Since some of the kid's groups are from inner-city OKC, many have never been in the field, so just getting outside was a joy for them. In the field over the 4 days we saw at least 3 species of frogs, a red-tailed hawk, lots of red-eared slider turtles, crayfish, ducks, snails, millipedes, lots of isopods (rolly pollys), cardinals, butterflies, beetles, etc. Many of these sightings were first for the kids. Personally, I'm really happy since many were into the insects and spiders: yay!
       Overall it was a lot of fun and I think we reached out to a lot of kids this week. Lets go Science!
        

Dung Beetles!

Hi everyone!

Lately I've been working with a certain type of beetle that gets a bit of a bad rap - the dung beetle. What do you think of when you hear about dung beetles? You're probably grimacing to yourself and thinking about beetles that spend all day swimming around in poo. Well, let me set the record straight - these little beetles are so much cooler and more helpful than that!

Dung beetles are in the family Scarabaeidae, which are the scarab beetles. Scarab beetles were a large part of the culture in ancient Egypt. Egyptians believed that scarab beetles with their balls of dung had a connection to the rising sun each morning.

Today, you might consider dung beetles as dirty, but they actually do a great job of tidying up the planet. After a large animal produces dung, the dung beetles roll up the dung into little balls, which they  roll by standing on their front legs and kicking with their back legs. They quickly roll the ball far away from the dung pile, and then burrow with it, "recycling" the dung for nutrients and to rear their young.

Dung beetles in action:

Here's a close-up photo of a dung beetle's incredibly strong front legs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scarabaeus_viettei_01.jpg

Dung beetles will fight over these dung balls, and other males sometimes try to steal them away, which is why the beetles roll the dung balls away from the original pile. Females do not do the rolling, but they will sometimes ride along on the ball to help keep it together.

Another interesting thing about these beetles use the Milky Way to figure out where they're going while they roll. They can also use the moonlight, but just this year a study reported that dung beetles could still figure out where they were going by orienting themselves to the stars. Here is more information about this study:

By breaking down dung in this way, dung beetles help increase soil health, as well as curbing some of the flies that would have been attracted to the dung pile for reproduction. If you should happen to see one rolling a dung ball, watch him - but let him go along his way.

Happy Friday everyone!

Science in Action and February Finds

   This past weekend was the first weekend in a while where there wasn't a museum related activity for members of our department, which was honestly a welcome break for us to spend time with our families and return to our non-bug-research related lives for a bit. However, the weekend before we had Science in Action and ID Day at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History on Sunday from 1-5pm. This event allows all of the departments in our museum to talk about their collections, research, and other activities while also having the curators there to help identify objects or specimens collected by Oklahomans. The most popular departments to visit during ID day are the Archaeology and Paleontology departments, since many people bring objects they believe to be fossils or arrowheads to have our experts look at. Other departments, such as ours or the other "recent" natural history departments (Ornithology, Herpetology, Mammalogy, etc.), usually get a few objects to identify but not a whole lot in comparison.
      Last year we had a lot of visitors with commercially purchased shells (such as shells bought for hermit crabs, shells you can buy while you're at the beach...etc.) that they wanted identified. Since neither myself or Laura is a malacologist (someone who studies mollusks), we did the best we could identifying what they had. We got to the mollusk family in most cases, but because a lot of the shells are exotic shells (from China, South East Asia), its even more of a challenge to figure out what they are because we only have guides to North America.

A selection of shells found at pet-stores for hermit crabs. Many are not what you'd normally find "as is" here in North America, making identification for us challenging!

    This year we had no shells (yay!), but only two arthropods. One was a small, dead jumping spider (Phidippus sp.) that was somewhat convenient because of our focus on spiders and jumping spiders in particular for our shows, and the other insect was a dead green lacewing (Chrysopus sp.). Both animals are out and about in late February probably because of the unseasonably warm weather out for a few days, and unfortunately also got hit with the cold temps again as Oklahoma see-saws its way through Spring and froze.
    Green Lacewings are able to survive in colder temperatures that most other insects can't tolerate here in North America, and are effective predators for other insects that are bad for crops, such as aphids. This is why they are commonly used for integrative pest management in many gardens and crops: they can be around longer than other insects to control pest insects in different growing seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter), and they are fairly easy to work with. If you are around lights during the night in spring and fall Green Lacewings are usually the first and last insects you'll see around, including here in Oklahoma.

Life cycle of Green Lacewings. From U.C. Davis IMP website (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/NE/green_lacewing.html)

     I wonder what next year's event will bring! Please no shells, though!